In recent years, there has been increasingly proliferated such an electronic conference that employs a large-sized display equipped with a touch panel (hereinafter, referred to as a large-sized touch panel display), on which various kinds of objects are displayed so as to make it possible to proceed the electronic conference by operating each of the objects displayed thereon. With respect to the large-sized touch panel display as above-mentioned, since it is difficult for the operator (presenter) to operate the object that is displayed at a position located beyond the reach of the operator, various kinds of methods for assisting the operator's operations to be performed on the panel have been proposed so far.
For instance, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication (JP-A) No. 2009-064209 sets forth such a display operation apparatus that has a display screen provided with a touch sensor so as to make it possible to operate the display screen through touch operating actions of the operator, and in the display operation apparatus above-mentioned, a small screen area, within which a minified image of the image displayed on the whole screen area is to be displayed, is established, and a touch operating action to be performed at a hand-unreachable position on the display screen is replaced with another touch operation performed on the small screen area by converting the touch operating position in the small screen area to the other corresponding position on the whole display screen, so as to enable an operation for remotely controlling the whole display screen through the touch operating action performed within the small screen area.
Further, JP-A No. 2009-087295 sets forth such another display operation apparatus that has a display screen provided with a touch sensor so as to make it possible to operate the display screen through touch operating actions of the operator, and in the display operation apparatus above-mentioned, the display screen is equally divided in both horizontal and vertical directions into divided images and a sub-screen area, on which each of the divided images displayed on the display screen is to be displayed, is established, and a touch operating action to be performed at a hand-unreachable position on the display screen is replaced with another touch operation performed on the sub-screen area by converting the touch operating position in the sub-screen area to the other corresponding position on the whole display screen, so as to enable an operation for remotely controlling the whole display screen through the touch operating actions performed within the sub-screen area.
As described in JP-A Nos. 2009-064209 and 2009-087295, it is possible to provide an operation use screen, such as the small screen area exemplified in JP-A No. 2009-064209, the sub-screen area exemplified in JP-A No. 2009-087295, or the like, in a part of the whole display screen in which an object is to be displayed, in order to make it possible to operate any one of objects currently displayed within an object display area by performing operating actions on the operation use screen.
However, according to the methods above-mentioned, since the controlling mode in the apparatus side changes between such a case that the operator touches the object display area and another case that the operator touches the operation use screen, it should be necessary for the operator to intentionally discriminate an operating action to be performed in a hand-reachable area and another operating action to be performed in a hand-unreachable area from each other. As a result, there has arisen such a problem that the operator's operations become cumbersome and it is difficult for the operator to concentrate the operation of the display concerned. The present invention seeks to solve the problem.